Adina’s Cute & Perky Blog!

I took a group of eleven foster kids out to dinner Friday night, and you think that has nothing to do with lifting. 

 But I know for me, this lifestyle permeates into almost everything I do. 
You see, I’m sitting across from a senior in high school. His name is Brian, and he came here be way of New Jersey by way of Honduras. 
So I’m thinking, “Wow. What brings a kid all the way from Honduras to foster care in Texas?” 
Then it dawns on me, this boy is fit. 

So I make my way over to his side when dinner is over and we are all just relaxed and visiting.
And before I can say anything, he says, “You lift, don’t you?”
I say, “Yes,” and flex my bicep for him to feel.”
His eyes light up as he says, “I know who Jay Cutler is. He’s number one in the world.”
This tells me he has seen magazines and pictures at some point, but does not have access to them now.
So I proceed to catch him up with the year he has evidently missed.
He soaks up what I am saying like a sponge. Like I am filling in the gap with answers to the questions he has been wondering.
Then I remember something and pull my phone from my back jean pocket and flip it open for him to see.
“This is a picture of me with my friend Victor Martinez. Do you know him? He grew up close to where you did in New York, and the gym is what kept him out of trouble.”
He looks at the phone and then he looks at me.
“He’s HUGE!”
And for the next few minutes I talked to him about the importance of going to the gym and how it can make a difference in his life.
Thirty minutes later, he hugged me when we parted ways in the parking lot.
I am very careful never to hug them first, because I don’t know what has brought them to where they are now. I don’t know who needs to stay distant because they have been touched too much, or who needs the hug of a mother because they have been too long without.
But I do know this; another friendship was born of the iron on Saturday evening in Dallas.
And when I come back to see him in a few months, I will come bearing a copy of MD from a few months ago with my favorite column of John’s and a stash of my favorite ISS stuff, because I know he can’t get any right now.
Because that’s what you do for a brother of iron. You lift him up, when he cannot lift himself.
And that’s why this lifestyle is good.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 5:15 am and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.